Re: Octave as a replacement for Excel

[Bill Denney]

babelproofreader wrote:
> I am currently using Excel to download stock/commodity prices and then
> calculate various market indicators etc (using the normal Excel spreadsheet
> functions) and then graphically plot the output. However, due to the amount
> of data contained in the spreadsheet and the intensive number crunching
> involved in calculating the various indicators, the speed of calculation
> within the spreadsheet has slowed down to such an extent that it is becoming
> impractical to use on a daily basis, and so I am searching for a replacement
> to this way of doing things. 
>
> My question is; would it be possible to use Octave to do all the heavy duty
> number crunching? What I envisage is simply using Excel or some other
> spreadsheet just to download daily price data into a database, or perhaps
> CSV or txt files, and then use this database or these files as input, via
> scripts, into Octave to do all the indicator calculations for subsequent
> plotting via Gnuplot, for example. Would this approach be doable, and if so,
> would there be a worthwhile increase in calculation speed?
Hello,

It is definitely possible to use Octave to do the "heavy duty number
crunching", and it will almost definitely be faster as long as you
appropriately vectorize your code.  If you install the financial
package, then you can also have octave download the data for you (from
Yahoo).  Also, if you write the code to do the technical analysis
indicators, we would very much appreciate if you could contribute it
back into the financial toolbox.

Have a good day,

Bill